eschatography

your heart, which you thought so eternal and constant, will be plucked still beating from your ribcage and thrown upon the smouldering ashes of your youth.

girls xxx

I have never dated the sorts of girls
that have pictures of themselves
and 'their BFFs'
wearing sunglasses and hugging
at relevant social events
like the Big Day Out
or maybe
something at Orientation
as the wallpaper
for the laptops
which they bring to lectures.

I imagine you'd spend
a lot of money
on drinks and taxis
dating one of these girls.

I imagine that they,
with their expensive hair
and expectations,
would cheat on me.

I imagine this and
I don't care
They ignore me
and
I ignore them
and
It's as if we are
different species.

Theres is the species
which gave the world
MTV
and
Vajazzling
and
that thing where
slutty girls call equally slutty girls
'moles'.

My species?
We gave the world nothing,
I guess.
Maybe some wasted breath.
Maybe some extra SSRI prescriptions.
Maybe audience to other
dead-hearted devils
getting CDs pressed by the hundred
and selling half of them
and caring less.

Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong.

voices and fists

There was that one Summer when we all agreed that our voices were stronger than fists.

And we went tumbling down into a world of metaphor and 3am debate on metaphysics.

When we were young and thought our words would reshape the world.

If only we could talk one on one with everybody.

Sparring them, delivering left hooks of perfect syllogism and haymakers of analogy.

Thinking, knowing that the only punches we would feel would be the thud of our hearts against our chests.

As we skim read Bakunin, called ourselves Anarchists and plotted the revolution.

Printing presses were going to be our machine guns.

A thirty second television advertisement was going to turn the Southern Broadcast Region into a Hiroshima of free-thinking enlightenment.

When we were high on home brew beer, badly cut speed and the untenable arrogance of youth.

The group momentum sent us onwards, carried us onwards, always onwards.

We were sure that Summer was our May 68.

Our voices are stronger than fists!

Our voices are stronger than fists!

We shouted, our rallying cry for the weak of arm and the hoarse of throat.

Every day there was a static in the air.

We got arrested and released.

We stole photocopy credit from our bosses and gave out pamphlets showing wrenches stuck in gears.

We ate food from dumpsters and it was all lifestyle revolution.

We didn't know about the working classes and we hid our private school educations to claim 'proletariat'.

It was as much Kerouac as Kropotkin

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we found out that no one ever lost three teeth at 3am outside KFC, City Mall, from someone's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until we realised that no one ever went to hospital from a cop's voice.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted,

Until the liquor ran out.

Until the job offers came.

Until you moved away.

Until pot became your own personal revolution.

Our voices are stronger than fists! we shouted.

Until we realised that swift knockout is maybe better than the slow erosion of empty rhetoric and the same grating voices.

And I am still shouting.

'My voice is stronger than my fists'.

But I'm lifting weights.

And I'm keeping quiet.

And I'm counting down the days until I can punch myself out.

For all the shit I ever talked.

the yeti from SkiFree as a metaphor for the inevitability of death

stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.
stop thinking so much.

colour

At dinner, I had been telling you about my dream.

And how I have only ever had black and white dreams.

And how there has always been a violence to my dreams.

One that I can never understand.

You told me that Jung would have a field day.

As I explained this to you.

You nodded as I talked about the blurred shadows, and the noise like a detuned television.

The sickening scramble of images when my eyes snap open to a fully-toned world.

We talked about the self-indulgence of talking about dreams.

And how no one really ever gives a damn.

How they just wait in line, for the chance to talk about their own dreams.

And this somehow makes us feel normal.

'I am glad that I'm not the only one who can't dream in colour', you said to me after the movie.

I wish you had said this sooner.

After I had told you this, I had felt incomplete.

As if I was missing something vital.

Like you would push me away for a real man.

For a whole man.

Someone who's dreams bloomed in technicolour.

All flowers, balloons and baby animals.

'We have seen too much', you said.

'How can we dream in colour, when our lives are black and white'.

'The black is work and the white is home to a colour television and a microwave dinner'.

'After a while it all blends to gray'.

'And there is nothing left to see'.

I slept with you that night.

You asked me to hold you, as we listened to the slow beat of rain on your roof.

It was almost in time with my heartbeat.

The gap at the top of your curtains let in a soft light.

Which cast shadows on your face.

In my dream that night, we held hands on the beach.

Your eyes were green.

Your lips were read.

I woke up, and I was not afraid of the day.

two poems

friday night

GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP
GET FUCKED UP

saturday morning

the god of friday night is dead and
saturday morning i'm left alone with the ghosts in my head.

i will hug my pillows.
i will send apologetic text messages.
i will remember stealing drinks and laugh inwardly
cheeseburgers hold too much appeal
i feel like i could go out and order all of them.

i will have dreams that we tidied the house on friday night.
i will wake up disappointed.

i have never known what isotonic means but i will seek it out
in the hope of some modern witch-doctor cure

blue powerade has come to taste like regret.
but every other flavour is no good.
they are offered, i think, to allow us to revel in the illusion of choice.

no one ever thinks of the environmental cost of a hangover.
probably not even greenpeace.
the oil for plastic to make bottled drinks.
the trees felled for our burger wrappers.
the rainforests that are probably cleared for coffee plantations.

i think about this and it makes me depressed.
i think about this and it makes me hungry and thirsty.
i pray to Anything for the courage to leave my bed.
i pray for a vengeful, Old Testament kinda God to
S M I T E
my neighbours kids.
someone, lend me salvation.